She wakes with a choked gasp, it is just before the hour of the lion. It is mid-winter, near two years at this point, and the sun does not yet rise. On her feather bed, it takes her several agonizing moments to know she is not still bleeding out at her Uncle's sword.
Fuck. Re-Zero, or Ground Hog's Day it is then. Not a vision.
Melara drops back onto her featherbed with a groan. Tossing her arms across her eyes as she sobs quietly as she can, barely able to suck in her breath for fear of what noise she can make. She cannot break. She cannot afford it. That is apparently a lesson she had yet to learn despite all of her memories. As with all things, calming down enough to think takes time.
Melara breathes, and curls into herself, eyes squeezed shut in the room she has been beaten in, again and again.
Fact one, I am 'supposed' to die before the night is out. Yet, I seem to wake up in my bed the morning just before the start of the Lannisport Tourney. The King is set to arrive tomorrow or the day after permitting the weather.
Temporarily hypothesizing on Re-zero rules, because optimism would not be remiss right now, I seem to be reviving the moment just before I do something to trigger my death flag.
Sub-fact one, one, in Loop I, it was my decision to sneak away with Cersei and Jeyne-The-Lady to seek Maggy the Frog and subsequently listen to Cersei's prophecy that lead to that Loop's end in the Well.
Sub-fact one, two, in Loop II, it was screaming my head off and annoying my Uncle and Jeyne the Maid into a more vicious beating than normal. And subsequently using Cersei to get Jeyne the Maid get beat near half to death in retaliation. Without alerting Tywin Lannister first, my dip-shit Lord Uncle, not only had enough time to sow doubt against me but stalled enough to take me down with him.
Fact two, I was once someone else before I was Melara Hetherspoon.
Sub-fact two, one, I do not remember who I was exactly.
Melara felt her hands slip into fists. Not knowing her own (original?) name made something in her ache . She was leaning on the fact that 'looping' had awakened her memories of another life. It was a touch more optimistic thought then the fact that she had slipped into the body of an abused, orphan girl in a fantasy universe where she was set to die within twenty-four hours.
Side note for fact two, I will be trying to get my hands on a slice of black forest cake, because the injustice of it being the catalyst of my Earth death is just fucking HACKS, especially since I didn't get to eat it.
Mentally, she reviewed in her head for a moment. She didn't know her own name from her first life, but she remembered a recipe for black forest cake. It was a grim sort of happiness that came to her then. At least she could make a cake that had been apparently worth her life. She sighed, gripping the bridge of her nose. Oh god wait, I don't have a normal convection oven. Fucking wood oven is my guess to what is available.
" Bullshit, " she muttered.
Fact three, I am in danger from my guardian.
Sub-fact three, one, he was probably poisoning me, and when I got protection via Cersei, he switched to beating me regularly to control me.
Sub-fact three, two, I was trying to minimalize the hurt in my life.
Sub-fact three, three, I am going to stop it altogether.
Fact four, I need to take my Lord Uncle down if I'm going to stop my abuse.
"First things first," she muttered quietly, "I need to make sure this isn't a Ground Hog's Day situation. I need to make it past the hour of the wolf."
In the dark of her bedroom, Melara quietly plotted.